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''wormwood'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260202202216-00-⌔

wormwood - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

wormwood (countable and uncountable, plural wormwoods)

  • An intensely bitter herb (Artemisia absinthium and similar plants in genus Artemisia) used in medicine, in the production of absinthe and vermouth, and as a tonic.
    • ✤ Synonyms: common wormwood, grande wormwood, absinthe, mugwort, artemisia
    • ✤ But as I said,/When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple/Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,/To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!1
    • ✤ Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.2
    • ✤ Blue skippers in sunny hours ope and shut
      Where wormwood and grunsel flowers by the cart ruts […]      3
    • ✤ Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
      And one with wormwood.      4
    • ✤ Amongst the herbs to be administered when the charm was sung over him were a yew-berry, lupin, helenium, marsh mallow, dock, elder, wormwood and strawberry leaves.5
    • ✤ Tradition credits John the Baptist with wearing a girdle fashioned of wormwood, while he was in the wilderness.6
  • (figurative) Something that causes bitterness or affliction; a cause of mortification or vexation.
    • ✤ The irony of this reply was wormwood to Zeluco; he fell into a gloomy fit of musing, and made no farther inquiry […].7
    • ✤ Yet I think the Archdeacon, a “new man,” to whom the aristocratic Canon’s popularity was wormwood, did dislike him.8

Etymology

From Middle English wormwode, a folk etymology (as if worm +‎ wood) of wermode (“wormwood”), from Old English wermōd (“wormwood, absinthe”), from Proto-West Germanic ﹡warjamōdā (“wormwood”). Cognate with Middle Low German wermode, wermede (“wormwood”), German Wermut (“wormwood”). Doublet of vermouth.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation, Australian) IPA: /ˈwɜːm.wʊd/
  • (Standard Southern British) IPA: /ˈwəːm.wɵd/
  • (General American) IPA: /ˈwɚm.wʊd/
  • (New Zealand, Wales) IPA: /ˈwøːm.wʊd/
  • (Scotland) IPA: /ˈwʌɾm.wʉd/
  • (Northern Ireland) IPA: /ˈwəɾm.wʉd/
  • (Liverpool, fair–fur merger) IPA: /ˈweːm.wʊd/
  • (Humberside, Teesside, fair–fur merger) IPA: /ˈwɛːm.wʊd/

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii (the nurse’s monologue)]: ↩

  2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 9:15: ↩

  3. c. 1864, John Clare, We passed by green closes: ↩

  4. 1897, Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Cliff Klingenhagen”, in Children of the Night: ↩

  5. 1922, Eleanour Sinclair Rohde, The Old English Herbals, London: Longmans, Green and Co., page 16: ↩

  6. 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 1: ↩

  7. 1789, John Moore, Zeluco, Valancourt, published 2008, page 57: ↩

  8. 1897, Stanley John Weyman, “The Deanery Ball”, in For the Cause: ↩

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